Rogue Island

the crusty oven.

“So that’s what that thing is for,” I said when she turned on the gas.

When dinner was ready, my place smelled better than it ever had. We sprawled on my bed in front of another Law & Order rerun, sharing Russian River straight from the bottle and eating off paper plates with plastic forks. Dorcas had all our dishes and silverware, but I didn’t care. I hated doing dishes.

Later, I tossed the plates and forks in the trash, and we settled back into bed, I with the new Robert Parker novel swiped from the desk of the paper’s book critic, she with a slim paperback by Patricia Smith, some lame poet she’d just discovered. The domesticity was both comfy and unsettling.

I was on chapter two when Veronica started reciting poems out loud, liking the way the words felt in her mouth. Reading poetry to me now? Poetry? Things were getting out of hand. I tried to block it out, concentrating hard now on whether the suspicious husband thought Spenser was the right man for a tail job. Veronica reached over, pulled the novel from my hands, and snapped it shut.

“You’ve got to hear this.”

“I’m not into poetry, Veronica. It does nothing for me, unless Bob Dylan’s whining it through his nose.”

“Just shut up and listen.”

What gave birth to jazz,

What moist, constricted passage it struggled from,

who held it aloft,

slapped that newborn ass

and sparked the glorious screaming

doesn’t matter.

What matters is fluid line shredding into scat

and us owning that sweetness;

what matters is cigarette-thin men

swearing at their reflections in the bartop.

What matters is sugar browns,

hitching up homemade skirts

and pounding holes in the dance floor,

out past curfew and tired of asking the time.

“Holy shit!” And I meant it.

“Told you.”

“Let me see that.” She handed me the book, and I turned it over, checking out the author photo on the back cover. “Damn. She’s hot too.”

“Shut up!” she said, but she was smiling when she said it.

Later I turned the TV back on to watch a rerun of The Shield, a cop show I liked because the star, Michael Chiklis, was a rabid Red Sox fan. Veronica excused herself and scooted down the stairs to fetch something from her car. As Detective Vic Mackey and his strike team tried to figure out how the One-Niners had gotten their hands on a truckload of grenade launchers, she slipped back in carrying a duffel. She opened my closet and saw four pairs of faded jeans, three Red Sox game jerseys, a wrinkled blue blazer, and a bunch of naked wire hangers. She unzipped the duffel and hung up a few things. The domesticity was getting more comfy and more unsettling by the minute.

Veronica flopped back into bed and snaked her legs around mine. I was rolling over to grab a kiss when the police scanner broke the mood.

“Code Red on Locust Street!”

“Damn!” she said. “Is that where I think it is?”

“Yeah, it’s in Mount Hope.”

We pulled on sweatshirts and headed for Secretariat.

“This is more than just a story now,” I said as I pulled away from the curb. “It’s personal. This firebug is really pissing me off.”

“How come?”

“He’s messing with my sex life.”

*  *  *

As I turned left off Camp Street onto Locust, the crew of Engine Company No. 6 was already coiling hoses and stowing equipment. Rosie was standing in the front yard of a weather-beaten bungalow, laughing.

“Liam!” she shouted. “Over here. You ought to see this.”

She led us through the front door and into a parlor decorated with horror-movie posters, Heineken empties, and dirty laundry. Straight ahead was one of those collapsible staircases that pull down from a trap door in the ceiling. She snapped on her flashlight, and Veronica and I followed her up.

“Watch your head,” she said, just as my skull met a rafter.

Firemen had hacked holes in the roof to vent the smoke, but the cramped attic still reeked of burned wiring and something more. Rosie swung her flashlight to the left, illuminating a crude plywood table with two-by-fours for legs. On top was a hydroponic farm, two dozen marijuana plants under a bank of charred high-intensity lights. Half of the plants were just stalks, their leaves consumed by the fire. The rest had withered in the heat.

“A house full of Brown students growing their own,” Rosie said. “The lights overheated and would have burned the place to the ground, we hadn’t gotten here in time.”

“Mind if I inhale?”

“Be my guest,” she said. “Half the crew’s been up here sucking in breaths and holding them.”

She laughed again, and we joined in. It wasn’t that funny, but we were all giddy with relief that the serial arsonist had taken the night off. And I think Rosie was a little high.

Rosie pulled me aside and whispered in my ear. She was only two inches taller than me, so she didn’t have to bend down much to do it.

“I thought you liked ’em tall.”

“Short works for me, too. All the parts are still there, just closer together.”

“She’s beautiful, Liam.”

“And she cooks.”

“She got any idea how crazy you are about her?”

That stopped me. “What makes you think that?”

“Are you kidding? I can tell just by the way you look at her.”

She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Buy her something nice she can wear against her skin.”

*  *  *

On the drive home I felt jittery. Rosie knew me better than I knew myself, and what she’d said had thrown me off balance. And the adrenaline rush of a big story was still cruising my arteries with no place to go. Veronica sensed it and laid her hand on my thigh.

“Why don’t we stop for a drink at Hopes?” she said.

“I got a better idea. Let’s go home and get naked.”

“Only if you explain something to me first.”

“What’s that?”

“How come Rosie gets to call you ‘Liam’?”

“She’s been calling me that since first grade, Veronica. I guess it’s a habit she can’t break.”

I backed Secretariat into a parking space across from my place and was reaching for the ignition key when the police scanner crackled again.

“Code Red on Doyle!”

My adrenal glands started pumping again as I turned the Bronco around. I drove back the way we’d come, monitoring the radio chatter.

“Triple-decker fully involved. People in the windows. Engine Six needs assistance.”